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"Shell, Coast Guard Seek to Salvage Grounded Alaska Rig"

"The U.S. Coast Guard and Royal Dutch Shell were fighting 70 mile-per-hour winds and 40-foot swells as they tried to assess damage to a floating oil drilling ship that ran aground on a remote Alaskan island."

"Authorities haven’t been able to board people onto the Shell rig Kulluk because of the challenging conditions and are still watching the weather, said Jason Moore, a spokesman in Anchorage, Alaska, for the Unified Command, a response group that includes the Coast Guard and industry representatives. The Coast Guard was observing the rig overnight, he said in a telephone interview today.

'It was rocking a little bit, so it is responding to wave action,' he said. 'It is stable. No sheen of any kind.'

The rig was stranded on the coast of Sitkalidak Island, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southwest of the town of Kodiak, according to a Coast Guard statement yesterday. Environmental groups yesterday called for a halt to the company’s efforts to drill in Arctic waters. Opponents had previously sued Shell to prohibit drilling off Alaska."